Monday, March 23, 2009

Hide - Don't come to me

Good to see Rodney Hide taking an economical approach with his language as well as ratepayer's money. An excerpt from an interview with Hawke's Bay bloggers, BayBuzz;

Your supporters in Hawke’s Bay are pretty conservative with regard to what should be within the circle of core services. But we also have some local elected officials here who are busily promoting so-called infrastructure spending.

(Hide) I understand that. If there’s pork being thrown around, people will want it coming their way.

How are you fending that off?

(Hide) Look, people know that I’m the last person to come to. Very early on in the piece, I was at a meeting of the Auckland area mayors. John Key explained they were going to be spending up on infrastructure. The question was asked: “Who they should approach in Government if they had some good infrastructure projects?” John Key suggested myself. I said “No way, because the answer from me will always be no.” I’m the last person to be approaching about spending more taxpayers’ or ratepayers’ money.


(Hat tip DPF)

2 comments:

Brett said...

"Always no", that doesn't sound like he's doing his job as it should be a case by case thing. Or it could be like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Anonymous said...

Actually the comparison is not whether one should throw out the baby with the bath water but whether the national government ought to be in the bathing baby business.